Articles by G P Deshpande

Old Perspective on Sino-Tibetan Relations G P Deshpande Tibet: Past and Present by Sir Charles Bell; Oxford University Press,
ANY discussion of India's China policy inevitably begins with a discourse on our Tibet policy. Barring Kashmir, Tibet is probably the most widely discussed subject in the foreign policy debates in our country. Reissue of Sir Charles Bells very useful volume 'Tibet: Past and Present'', first publish- ed in 1924, is very valuable; for it throws considerable historical and political light on the Tibetan question as it then bothered His Majesty's Government.

6 The problem of defining individual income, quite apart from any problem of practical measurement, appears in principle insoluble. See Nicholas Kaldor: "An Expenditure Tax".

Unfinished Business G P Deshpande THE new year has brought little comfort to China-watchers. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) is slowly drawing to a close, but the end still seems far off. All that the Chinese official press has told us (just in case somebody did not know) is that China's Khrushchev happens to be "the Renegade, Traitor and Scab, Liu Shao-chi". The Twelfth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China met from October 13 to 31, 1968 and "ratified the Report on the Examination of the Crimes . . . of Liu Shao-chi submitted by the special group under the Central Committee for the examination of his case". The Plenary Session "unanimously adopted a resolution to expel Liu Shao- chi from the Party once and for all, to dismiss him from all posts both inside and outside the Party". This report, however, was not published; so the document which claims to advance overwhelming evidence of Liu's treachery will remain classified for some time. The second major decision of the Plenary Session was contained in the declaration that "through the storms of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, ample ideological, political and organisational conditions have been prepared for convening the Ninth National Congress of the Party. The Plenary Session decided that the Ninth Congress will be held at an appropriate time." Here again no specific dates are given; nor is a time-limit set. However, it might be a safe guess that Mao is working for a Congress this year. Over the year 1968 Revolutionary Committees were established in all the provinces of China (except, of course, Taiwan, as People's Daily hastened to point out). The last Revolutionary Committee was established in Tibet. One should not be surprised to find these Revolutionary Committees ultimately replacing the Party Committees. The delegates attending the proposed Congress will call themselves Party Delegates, but the Party itself will be a tempered Party if not an altogether new one. Throughout 1968 several articles appeared in the Chinese Press extolling once again the central role of the Party. This might indicate that Mao feels confident that he now has a chastened Party.

CHINESE diplomacy has undoubtedly become shrill and noisy since the cultural revolution got into its stride. The complexion of our news media and the waving of hundreds of redbooks every day by demonstrating Red Guards have together conveyed an unhappy impression. A propaganda tabloid published from Hong Kong said: "The average, reasonably well-informed newspaper reader living in lands outside China can only look at China's paranoid style of foreign relations with a feeling of wonder, tinged by anxiety that eventually causes him to shrug, turn away in frustration, muttering that it is all madness". One has only to look around, it is argued, to realise that the Chinese standing in the whole of Asia is at its lowest. Erstwhile friends like Burma and Nepal are up in arms.

G P Deshpande LAST MONTH it looked from the incidents in the city of Wuhan on the banks of the Yang-tse that the Yang-tse was on fire again. Exactly a year ago this mighty river of China was on fire when Chairman Mao had his historic swim in it at Wuhan. The red guard who swam with him found the water exceedingly sweet, though those familiar with the muddy waters of the Yang-tse smiled derisively. While some enthusiasts were busy calculating whether Mao did really swim at the speed at which the official press claimed he did, that swim indeed set a historic process into action. Last month articles commemorating this swim recalled Mao's words: ''Yang-tse is big, but so what? American imperialism is big and yet we fought it once and if necessary we shall fight again." The swim marked the, beginning of a great movement, 'the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution'. The Yang-tse was on fire. All the revisionists within the Communist Party of China and all those power- holders who were taking the capitalist road had to be attacked. The fagging spirit of communism and revolution had to be revitalised. After millenia of flowing the Yang- tse had not slowed down. Why then had the revolutionary spirit of power-holders in China sapped? Something had to be done about it and fast.